Mazda Seeks To Become 'Game Changer' With New Ad Effort

Mazda hasn't been a game-changer in the global automotive business since its rotary engines of decades ago. But the brand seeks to rise above its constant 2-percent share of the U.S. market with a new advertising campaign called "Game Changers" that it's launching this weekend.

The effort is meant to highlight the worthiness of Mazda's new vehicles and to assist the brand's efforts to move upscale as well as to break through the ever-present auto-marketing clutter.

"Game Changers" will feature TV spots that highlight "game-changing" American figures from sports to science -- as well as, initially, Mazda's refreshingly redesigned new Mazda6 sedan.

So one ad features Dick Fosbury, the engineer whose revolutionary way of back-flipping over the high-jump bar won him a gold medal in the 1968 Summer Olympics. Another focuses on Laird Hamilton, the American surfer whose innovation was to use a Jet Ski to tow himself out to sea so he could tackle really big waves in spectacular fashion. Thomas
Edison will be the subject of a future spot as well.

"We're focusing on courage, creativity and conviction in the new campaign," Russell Wager, Mazda's U.S. CMO, told me. "Those three words are basically what consumers told us they thought Mazda was about." He explained, "Versus just being 'any brand,' the idea is to align our products with people who changed the world for good."

Besides, Wager, said, Mazda's pipeline is full of "a slew of new products coming out over the next 24 months" that he declined to specify. "So the time is now to do this" campaign. "This will be the campaign going forward for the next three years, minimum, across all models for the Mazda brand."

Overall, he said, Mazda is seeking to raise the level of its products and brand identity to something Wager called "alternative-to-premium" status, in which its vehicles are perceived as providing a premium experience but not at a high price.

That doesn't mean attempting to compete with "premium-segment" vehicles, Wager explained. "What it means is that, currently, against our major competitors, we can't compete with them head-to-head from a financial-resources perspective, with marketing," he said. "We have to find a white space, and that's to be slightly above them with a premium product, and a premium experience, but not at a premium price."

Wager said that Mazda6, since its introduction early this year, already has been moving the brand in that direction. Transaction prices for the redesigned sedan "already are pretty darn close to the highest" in the mid-size sedan segment, he said. "And we haven't even done our first mass-advertising communications" for the redesigned nameplate.

Wager noted that Mazda6's eye-catching new styling made it a finalist among some pretty impressive company in the World Car Design of the Year Award at the New York International Auto Show in March, which was won by the Jaguar F-Type and also included the Aston Martin Vanquish.

"But our prices start at just $21,000," Wager reminded.

What about "Zoom Zoom"? Wager acknowledged that the tag line has been very successfully identified with Mazda over the last several years, and it'll remain a minor presence at the end of the "Game Changers" spots. But he said that the phrase had become indefinite to most consumers.

"Nine out of 10 people in any research will say 'Zoom Zoom' when you ask them about Mazda," he explained. "But when you ask what does 'Zoom Zoom' mean, you'll get nine different answers."